How Does TV-B-Gone® Work?

Your TV-B-Gone universal remote control is very much like any other TV remote control. It is harmless to televisions. It is harmless to humans and other animals.

TV-B-Gone is a type of Universal Remote Control. Normal television Universal Remote Controls can control many different makes and models of Televisions. They are designed to control all functions for a make and model of a tv that you program it to control. A TV-B-Gone Universal Remote Control is much simpler and much more useful – it only controls one function: POWER. And it controls that function for virtually all television makes and models. There is no need to program your TV-B-Gone.

TV-B-Gone, just like other kinds of Universal Remote Controls, works by shining a pulsing invisible light at a tv. The invisible light is called Infra Red (abbreviated as IR). IR is always all around us. IR can come from the sun, from our bodies, from a light bulb, or from an IR emitter, which is how a TV-B-Gone remote control generates IR light. The IR emitter is actually a Light Emitting Diode (abbreviated as LED), which is a very efficient electronic semiconductor device for sending out light.

Because IR is always all around us, tv remote controls are designed to pulse IR light in a unique way so that the tv won’t be fooled by ordinary IR light floating around the room. Different tv manufacturers’ remote controls pulse IR light in many different ways in order to remotely control their televisions. Furthermore, each manufacturers’ remote controls are designed to send out a unique pulsing of IR light for different functions. When a tv “sees” pulsing IR light, it tries to interpret the pulsing IR light, and if it is successful in interpreting it, the tv performs the function that the manufacturer of the remote control designed it to do (such as turn down the volume, change the channel, or turn off the power).

TV-B-Gone remote controls mimic all of these different ways that manufacturers have of pulsing IR light. And it does it in the same same way that almost all other remote controls do it: by a small computer chip sending out the correctly timed pulses from information stored in its own database to the IR LED. But unlike most universal remote controls, TV-B-Gone only emits pulses for POWER, which, of course, is the only important function of any remote control, since this will put televisions in their most beneficial state: OFF. Another difference between TV-B-Gone and most other universal remote controls is that it sends out it’s code for virtually every manufacturer of televisions. Since tv manufacturers often use different POWER codes for their North American televisions than for their European televisions, we make 2 different models of TV-B-Gone universal remote controls, one with a database of North American POWER codes, and one with a database of European POWER codes. The POWER codes for most Asian televisions are almost all the same as those for North American televisions, so the North American model is also the same as the Asian model.

When you push the button on your TV-B-Gone remote control, it turns itself on, and then sends out a sequence of POWER codes for every television in its database. Each POWER code takes time to emit. The result is that it takes about 69 seconds to emit POWER codes for all tv in its database (that’s for the North American & Asian model – the European model takes 62 seconds). After it emits each of the POWER codes, it turns itself off. Your TV-B-Gone is designed to use very little power from its batteries, so under normal use, the batteries should last about 3 months to a year.

A minute is a long time to wait when you’re waiting for it. So, to shorten the amount of time it will take to turn off most televisions, TV-B-Gone remote controls emit the POWER codes for the most popular televisions first. So, 90% of all televisions will turn off within the first 17 seconds (that’s for the North American & Asian model – for the European model 90% will turn off within the first 12 seconds).

Now that you know how your TV-B-Gone universal remote control works, go out there and make it do its thing: turn off your television! The power is in your hands!